Integrating and building on the constitutional ethics paradigm proposed by Paul Roush and the neo-intuitionist moral decision-making scheme proposed by Robert Audi, I defend a novel decisionmaking procedure for hard moral choices in the military. The key to Roush’s model of justifiable disobedience is a soldier’s ability to recognize when an ostensibly legal order constitutes a ‘fundamental violation of justice’. However, the nature and structure of this act of moral recognition requires more elucidation than Roush has provided. In order to (...) avoid grounding moral recognition and decision-making on a narrowly partisan account of moral theory, I appeal to Audi’s neo-intuitionist account of prima facie moral duties. I then repurpose and develop further a decision procedure that Audi proposed for the business context. When faced with an ethical dilemma in military service, a soldier should classify his/her obligations; identify the conflicts between his/her obligations; assess the weightiness of his/ her obligations; determine ethically viable options; and then make a decision. I close the discussion with an examination of the practical problems one might face in adopting the proposal. (shrink)

Following the recent decisions by Western militaries to pursue greater integration of women into combat roles, this paper examines the principles that motivate integration and organizes them into a theoretically coherent scheme that could serve as a roadmap for policymakers as they rebuild military institutions and their combat units in an integrated fashion. The strategy of the paper is Rawlsian: the right relationship between the principles that motivate integration can be derived through an application of Rawls's methodology as described in (...) A Theory of Justice. The result is a lexically ordered set of principles that begin with gender-blind equal opportunity but permit adjustments that take gender into account when these adjustments serve the interests of military institutions. The paper concludes with a discussion of two concerns, one practical and one theoretical, that one might have about the account. (shrink)